The cast is massive, and on one day alone, the team fit clothes on 118 of the youth performers who will be featured in the production.
The task was completed with final, in-persons fittings on performers in recent weeks, which (due to COVID restrictions) had to be done under controlled conditions - and fast. Holly Hynes, a costume designer with more than 250 ballets on her resume, created new clothes for Colorado Ballet’s “The Nutcracker.” Rosalie O’Connor, provided by Holly Hynes Then came the fabric selections and the arrangements with the folks who cut and sew actual costumes. Maybe a hem needed to be lifted or lowered, or a period detail altered to make a production, set in Europe in the 1890s, resonate with contemporary audiences.Īfter that, she added in colors and sent the drawings back for a second set of approvals. That meant starting with her process of immersing herself, once again, in Tchaikovsky’s beloved music, and then creating sketches for all of the costumes in simple black-and-white - she draws everything by hand - and sending them to the company for revisions. She also tried to keep her workflow as normal as possible. But there also was work to give out, and they spread it around, contracting companies in 18 different shops, some in New York but also in places like California, Texas, West Virginia and Colorado. She acknowledges there were deals to be had for the ballet company. “There was no Broadway, no film, no television, no opera. “All these costume-makers were in trouble,” said Hynes. There was also an excess of fabricators who needed work during the health crisis.
Hynes and the in-house team at Colorado Ballet who worked closely together got a full extra year to think through their decisions. The were some advantages to the postponement. When it was possible, she and her assistant Ricky Lurie met in her home.Ĭolorado Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” runs from Nov. She got by, borrowing neighborhood teens to model lithe ballerina outfits and working through problems via Zoom. Those are things that Hynes and her team prefer to do in person, traveling to different cities, but were forced to handle locally or through digital screens.
Costume designers need to see and feel fabrics, to watch dancers up-close as they move in new creations made of chiffon, taffeta and silk, to push and pull at stretchy materials during multiple fittings.
Sketches of costumes for a Snowflake, the Mouse King and the Nutcracker Prince by designer Holly Hynes, for the Colorado Ballet’s “Nutcracker.”įor Hynes, the pandemic lockdown presented challenges she never might have imagined. The upcoming slate of performances at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House will be the first time in 16 years the company has refreshed its production so thoroughly. She is referring to the coronavirus pandemic, of course, which forced Colorado Ballet to cancel last year’s performances - and the introduction of its new sets by stage designer Thomas Boyd and Hynes’ costumes. “We thought (it) was going to be (in) 2020,” said Hynes.